Woman: I Was Asked to Lie About Alleged Condit Affair
July 3 -- A flight attendant who claims she had a 10-month affair with Rep. Gary Condit says a private investigator working for the congressman's lawyer asked her to sign an affidavit stating that they had no relationship.
Anne Marie Smith, a United Airlines flight attendant, told Fox News that the relationship she had with Condit was romantic from the start. But she also said she knew nothing about any relationship he might have had with Chandra Levy, the Washington intern who has been missing since May 1.
She said she never heard of Levy before news broke that she was missing on May 5.
She said that Condit told her she did not need to speak to the FBI, who had begun interviewing people who knew the congressman.
Law enforcement officials told ABCNEWS that Smith's story might not have any direct relevance to the Levy case, but it raises questions about whether the alleged request to sign the affidavit was obstruction of justice.
Condit's attorney in Washington, Abbe Lowell, described the flight attendant's story as craziness and then referred calls to the congressman's California lawyer, Joe Cotchett, who also dismissed the story and then refused to comment further.
‘Potentially Embarrassing’
A highly placed law enforcement source in Washington told ABCNEWS that there have been no new developments in the hunt for Levy.
He said there was no new lead that led them to begin searching landfills, describing the move as a "natural progression" in a missing person case. It just means that police are looking at things they had not looked at thus far under regular procedures.
The source expressed frustration that it's been a couple months since Levy's disappearance and so little progress has been made. He said it wouldbe good to get the case solved for the family's sake.
Smith told Fox that Condit called her soon after the Levy story broke and asked her to keep quiet about their relationship.
"He said, 'You don't want anything — this could be potentially embarrassing for both of us,'" Smith said.
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